The Comparative Study of Communist Political Systems

Abstract

The intent of this article is to join in the slowly rising chorus of voices expressing dissatisfaction with the methods used so far in the analysis of Communist political systems. I shall argue, perhaps in rather circuitous fashion, that political scientists in the West have failed, by and large, to apply to the Communist world the rich store of concepts developed for the comparative study of political systems and that the concepts that have been used have been applied in ways that are objectionable. If, as is at times maintained, our discipline tends to be provincial or ethnocentric in its methods, this tendency has been most pronounced, perhaps, in the study of Communist systems. As a result, very little work done has been genuinely comparative. The discipline has failed to place the Communist world into any of the several systematic conceptual frameworks it has developed.